Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA10567 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 11 Jan 2002 14:37:26 GMT From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: playing at suicide Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 06:33:12 -0800 Message-ID: <JJEIIFOCALCJKOFDFAHBOEMBEBAA.richard@brodietech.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 In-Reply-To: <LAW2-F88ieoYsNT5tcY0001e673@hotmail.com> Importance: Normal Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
<<give me an example
of a meme that is NOT a tool.>>
I suspect your definition of "tool" is broad enough to include everything,
but given names are a nice example of memes that spread without much regard
to their utility to the host.
<<This is the key to my concept. It is not the memes that are selfish – it
is
the person, the brain, the individual who is using them.>>
This is the key to your lack of understanding of memetics. Nobody needs a
new theory if they think culture is developed solely consciously by humans
through gradual improvements in their ideas and artifacts. That explains
some of culture but not nearly all. Why the rise in televangelism? Have we
all decided that's more useful than other religions, or no religion at all?
<< We choose the
tools/memes from the store that is available to us based on how well they do
the job we are trying to accomplish with them.>>
If by "we" you mean yourself, you are a member of a very small and
enlightened group of people who consciously choose their mental programming.
Most people just order whatever beer they've seen their friends order, or
they've seen lots of TV ads for.
<< The older we grow, the more
we have available. We see someone use a tool to get something and we try to
use it. If it doesn’t work as we expected, we listen again and try again
until we can use it, or we discard it. There is a limit to the number of
sounds we can handle in daily conversation, for example, so we settle on
those that are most useful to us and drop the rest.>>
Then why do I know the names of 20 brands of cigarette but not 20 words of
Chinese?
<<People are the controlling
factor in the evolution of culture in all of its plurality and scope. It is
not memes deciding what we will inherit and add to the pool, it is we who
make that decision with the choices of tools we use.>>
But only a very small portion of it is conscious choice. Therefore certain
memes have properties that make them preferentially accepted and spread over
others. Such properties are ease of understanding, danger, reward, status,
celebrity, and so on. These are not necessarily correlated with utility to
the host.
<<Genes, on the other hand, do influence that decision. They produce the
chemicals which cause us to make emotional choices about who will inherit
our genes and who won’t. Lust, anger, fear, jealousy, and other emotions
are the product of chemical responses to our environment and are dictated by
the gene mix that guided our construction.>>
Memes influence all those same emotions.
<<It can be as simple as a hand gesture. The ‘high five” started with a
group
of blacks as one of many hand signals they used for establishing homogeneity
as a group. Most of the signals they used are no longer remembered. The
"Gimme five!" spawned the high five. The high five spread throughout black
society, along with the popularity of sports figures who used it, and today
you’ll find it being used among people in every segment of American society.
The uses to which it is put have also grown. It now carries connotations
of success as well as solidarity. It has spawned further variations such as
the “low five” which may or may not grow and multiply.>>
Why does high five have more utility than a wave or a handshake?
<<Right now people are
pointing in all directions and calling all sorts of things memes without
agreeing with others trying to define the concept. I think I have a
solution.>>
Don't confuse the off-the-wall postings on this mailing list with a lack of
agreement on the definition of meme. Everybody in the field understands that
memes are cultural replicators. The selfish-meme concept is the cornerstone
of memetics. If you don't understand that you have missed the point
entirely.
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